


I Am Titanium

by erbinnerdgirl5



Category: Zombies Run!
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Female Runner Five, Gen, I'm not going to tag every character who makes an appearance, Minor Character Death, Prequel, S1 spoilers, Season 1 Spoilers, That would be bonkers, minor 5k training spoilers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-28
Updated: 2018-05-09
Packaged: 2018-10-25 03:45:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 20,830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10756056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/erbinnerdgirl5/pseuds/erbinnerdgirl5
Summary: Runner Five. The indestructible Runner Five, Hero of Abel Township...who are you? Do you even know?





	1. Before

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She had a life before the apocalypse. She had a name before she was Runner Five. She had a home before she came to Abel.
> 
> None of that matters now, of course. Except that it does. How we became the people we become always matters. Even when the world has ended, and the only thing that really matters is survival. Eventually, we will survive, and the things that came before will matter again.
> 
> She had a life before the apocalypse. She doesn't remember it, now, but one day she might, and one day, it will matter.

She had loved Michael. Desperately, she thought. Desperately enough to follow him to England after graduation, anyway. In hindsight, love for him probably wasn't her primary motivator as much as a romantic idea that living in England would be full of long misty walks and reading books in cozy libraries with hot cups of milky tea was. After all, she'd studied the classics in school, and wouldn't living in England give her a better appreciation for, and opportunity to further her investigation of, the literature she had loved for so long?

Her job at the café wasn't exactly what she had imagined when she made plans to move; she dealt with plenty of tea and cozy reading chairs, but she was serving the tea to the people sitting in those chairs, not drinking it while _she_ sat in them. Still, though, it wasn't bad. She liked the work, and it gave her plenty of opportunity to let herself get lost in thoughts of walks she would take and books she would read when she had her days off.

Those days off, of course, were spent keeping up with the flat, as Michael turned out to be an absolute rubbish housemate. Dirty socks between the sofa cushions, broken-leaded pencils and those bits of paper that come off the pages when you tear them out of a spiral notebook left all over every horizontal surface. He didn't cook, not that that mattered as he was rarely home for meals, but when he was he just left his dishes at the table as he hustled back out the door to the lab. He'd gotten an internship-turned-full-time-job at a biotechnology company called Pandora Haze, and of course he couldn't tell her anything about the work, it was all top secret (or so he said; she suspected that maybe he just didn't feel like talking about work to _her_ ), but he spent so much time there that she couldn't help but wonder if he was having an affair. She didn't _think_ he was, he wasn't the type, but she supposed anything was possible. She tried to summon up some anger, or at least indignation, at the idea of him cheating, but all she was ever able to muster was a weary acceptance. It didn't really matter what was keeping him out of the flat all the time; he was out of the flat all the time, and that was that. She worked irregular hours anyway, so it wasn't likely they'd have seen much of one another even if he had been home after the lab's business hours.

Still, she liked England. She liked the weather, though her parents didn't understand that at _all_ , and neither did Michael. She liked her job, and her coworkers, and the regulars at the café (the closest thing she had had to real friends, she realized much later), and being able to say she lived in England. The flat was tiny, but that made cleaning it more than manageable in spite of Michael's messiness. She missed some things about America—most of them food-related, although she had to admit that British chocolate was far better than American chocolate was—but she didn't regret having moved one bit.

***

When the outbreak started, she had been at home, reading.  Her mobile (how she loved calling things by their British names!) had rung, and her mother, sounding strange and…not panicked, exactly, but something akin to it, had asked, "Where are you?"

"I'm at my flat, Mum", she had said. "Why, what's wrong?"

Normally her mother would have told her not to call her "Mum", to stop trying to pretend to be English, but today she ignored it. "Turn on the news. Where's Michael?"

She reached for the remote. "He's at work, same as always."

"Did you turn on the news?"

"Doing it now, why?"

"They’re saying there’s some kind of virus outbreak over there. The news people over here have no idea what it is, or at least they aren’t saying if they do, but it’s apparently highly contagious so until they get it contained, stay inside. You need to call Michael and tell him to get home before it really starts to spread through the public. That boy works too much, he can stand to take a few days off until this blows over."

"Okay. I'll call him now."

"Please be careful, and check in so I know you're okay. I love you."

"Love you too, Mom." The American term slipped out unnoticed by either of them. She hung up, and watched the news for a few minutes before dialing Michael's number.

"I can't talk now," he answered.

 _Then why did you answer?_ she thought, but didn’t say. "I just spoke to my mother," she said. "There's some sort of virus outbreak. It sounds really contagious. You need to come home."

"I can't. They need me here."

"Michael, the news is making this sound like a really big deal."

"I can't—"

"Yes, you can!" she yelled. Well, spoke forcefully. Well, more forcefully than she ever had with him before. She heard him go quiet on the other end of the line. "Look," she said in a more normal tone. "I don't really know what's going on, but it sounds really bad and I don’t want to get it and I don’t want you to get it and I need you to come home. Now." A beat. "Michael, please. Come home."

He was silent a moment, and she heard things clinking in the background. Finally, he said, "I know all about the outbreak. Listen, it'll be fine. I'll be home as soon as I can get away. Probably a few hours. Just…start packing bags for us both, just in case. Light ones, like backpacks."

"What—"

"Pack some food, and bottled water. As much as you can fit in the bags and still be able to carry them comfortably. We only need one or two changes of clothes each, stick to essentials, with long sleeves and pants."

"Michael—"

"And put on sneakers. We'll have to walk probably. I'll see you soon." And he hung up.

She sat there, staring at the phone, for far longer than she realized. When she finally snapped back to reality, she clicked the TV to mute, and went to pack bags for them both, as he had instructed.

***

When Michael finally got home, his eyes were wild, and without even kissing her hello he began unpacking the backpacks she had carefully loaded up earlier.

"What are you doing?" she cried. "You told me to pack those!"

"I have to make sure you got it right," he said.

"Right for _what_? Michael, what is going _on_?"

"Is this your _makeup_? Why the fuck—" she flinched "—would you pack makeup? I told you, only the essentials. And what is this?" He held up a brown paper bag.

"It’s some sandwiches."

"We don't need _sandwiches_ ," he said, disgusted. "We need non-perishable foods. Protein bars, mixed nuts, things that don't weigh much and that will fill us up and give us energy to keep moving." He threw the sandwiches in the bin and started rifling through the cupboards for appropriate food.

She caught at his arm. "What the fuck is _happening_ , Michael?"

He blinked at her. She never swore. Finally, he lowered his arms, took her hand, and led her to the sofa. "You've been watching the news?"

"Yeah. It doesn’t make sense."

"No," he agreed, "it doesn't. But it is what it is. There's some sort of virus that appears to shut off everything but the most basic animal instincts. And from what I gathered from listening around at the lab, it's extremely contagious, but not airborne."

"Then how is it passed?"

"Bites."

" _Bites_?"

“One of those base instincts that's being exhibited is to hunt for food. People are biting each other, ripping each other apart, and the ones who aren't completely torn to shreds are getting sick and doing the same thing."

"Oh, God."

"Yeah. So. We have to pack, and go. We'll go to the nearest military base. It's not too far, so if the car gets stuck we can walk. I hope we don't have to, it's not really safe, but everyone is panicking and trying to leave the city, so we need to go soon and we need to be prepared to go on foot at some point."

"How long will it take to get there? If we have to walk?"

"Probably only a day or two, if we can move fast. I'm hoping we won't have to stop to sleep before we get there. We'll be too vulnerable to attacks." He stood up and went back to the kitchen. "I'm going to repack the food. You go ahead and put the clothes back in the packs. And you should change. Jeans, long sleeves.”

She felt like she was in a dream as she moved to the bedroom. Leggings off, jeans on. Layers were probably good, so she pulled a tank top, a t-shirt, and a fitted zip-up jacket out of the dresser. Twisted her hair into a bun to keep it out of her face.

Stripping off the worn, baggy sweatshirt she’d been wearing, she reached for the tank top, then paused. If they were going to end up walking, the pretty, lacy bra she had on would not be a good idea. She unclasped it and dropped it in the drawer, reaching for her lone sports bra instead. She made a face at it. She only wore it when she got it into her head to do yoga, which was rarely, because she was bad at yoga, because she did it so rarely, because she was so bad at it. She hated the way the bra flattened her boobs out, but she knew if they had to abandon the car it would be more comfortable than the lace one. “This all better blow over fast,” she muttered. “I am not a sports bra girl.”

***

In the end, Michael had been right about traffic. They didn't make it very far before they had to abandon the car.

He had not been right about how long it would take them to get to the military base. It had been nearly a week. A week of hiding, of using whatever they could get their hands on as weapons against the infected who attacked them, a week of sleeping ("sleeping") in shifts on the cold ground. One night, despite her terror, exhaustion took over while she was meant to be keeping watch and she woke to the sound of one of the infected shambling right past where she and Michael were curled together in a ditch. It (she couldn't think of it as a person, as male or female; it was just "it") was sniffing the air like a dog, and she held her breath until it was out of sight. After that night, she didn't sleep, even when it was her turn.

But finally, _finally_ , they arrived at the military base. The crowd of people outside the base was loud enough to attract infected people, so snipers were stationed at the lookout towers on either side of the gates to take out any who tried to come close. The sounds of the gunshots were unsettling, but by this point, she felt basically numb to the whole experience of this plague.

There were tents set up outside the gates of the base; one at a time, new arrivals were taken into a tent and made to strip naked to prove they hadn't been bitten. They had to take every precaution.

The strip search was just a visual inspection of her skin, but the fact that it was in a pop-up tent with a crowd of strangers just outside the thin fabric walls gave it an extra level of mortification.

When she was allowed to put her filthy clothes back on and exit the tent, she looked around for Michael as they ushered her through the gates. "Wait, my boyfriend," she said to the guard. "He was in another tent. Can I wait for him?"

"He might already be through, and if he's not, he'll catch up. Unless he's been bitten. Then, sorry love, but you won't be seeing him again." The guard herded her and the others who had exited their tents at the same time as she had through the gates, clanging them shut behind them. Another guard took them to join a line of people in front of uniformed individuals seated at tables, with notebooks and small notepads.

She stood quietly in her line, watching the gates, but she didn't see Michael come through. When she reached the front of the line, the woman doing her intake kindly asked her for her name, age, and if she was alone.

"I came with my boyfriend, but I haven't seen him since before we got inside. Has he come through already? Michael Wakefield?"

"I haven't processed him, but it's possible someone else has. If so, or if he's just not through yet, you'll be able to meet up with him soon. Now, let's figure out where we should put you. What was your job before you came here?"  
            "I worked in a café."

"A waitress?"

"And I made coffee, worked the register, toasted croissants, that sort of thing."

"Did you attend university, and if so what did you study?"

"I did, in America. I studied literature."

"Can you shoot a gun?"

"I've never even seen a gun."

The woman made some notes, then scribbled something on the small notepad and ripped a page off, handing it to her. "We'll start you off in the kitchens and see how you do. But for now, let's just get you settled in. Go on into that building there, and have a seat, and if your boyfriend's not in there yet then he'll be in once he's been processed and you two can go get some rest." The woman smiled at her, and she tried to smile back. Standing up, she glanced back at the gate one last time. No sign of Michael. Well, maybe he was already inside.

He wasn't.

She explained to the man inside that she was waiting for her boyfriend, whom she'd arrived with, and she'd been told to come here. He looked at the ripped-off piece of paper she'd brought from the intake table, then handed it back and directed her to a chair. Sitting down, she looked at the paper. On it was written her name and age, and that she'd been a waitress and was being assigned to "kitchen duty". It also said she was waiting for her boyfriend, Michael Wakefield, with whom she would be assigned a bed.

She sat for hours, watching the door. At first, she saw faces she recognized from the intake lines. As time went on, though, and darkness fell, she not only stopped seeing familiar faces, but stopped seeing many new ones, either.

She asked the man at the door if he could help her find someone to tell her where Michael was. "If he ain't here, he probably got bit and they wouldn't let him in."

She shook her head. "That's impossible. We were never apart. There would have been no opportunity for him to get bitten without me knowing about it."

He shrugged. "Dunno what to tell ya. If they'd'a let him in, he'd'a been here. I can go look for him on the intake lists after my shift ends, but I wouldn't get my hopes up if I were you."

"I'd appreciate it."

"You should go get a bed and some sleep. No offense, but you look like hell."

"I'll just wait until you've had a chance to check the lists." And she sat some more, waited some more.

After a time, the man's relief tagged in, and the man told her he would go check the lists and be back. When he came in again, his face told her before he opened his mouth that Michael hadn't been on the lists. "Sorry, ma'am. No Michael Wakefields."

"So what does that mean?" she asked, panic rising in her chest. She forced it down. She had to stay calm. "If they wouldn't let him in, where is he? Still outside? Can I go talk to him through the gate, find out what happened? At least say goodbye?"

The two men exchanged looks. "If…if he got bit, he's not going to be outside the gate. They won't let him stick around to turn with all those people out there."

"Then where—oh." She stopped, realizing what they didn't want to say out loud to her. "Oh. I see." She nodded once, then stumbled backwards to the chair she had vacated. She collapsed into it, staring at her hands. The men moved off, talking quietly, not wanting to disturb her.

After a moment, her eyes widened and she looked up, diving for her bag and pulling out her mobile. Turning it on, she saw that she still had decent battery charge, but service didn't look great. She dialed anyway. After many rings, she heard her mother's voice mail pick up, the automated voice reciting her mother's number back to her. After the beep, she blurted, "Mom, oh my God, I'm so sorry I didn't call before now. I don't know if you can even hear this, it doesn't sound like the connection is great. But I need you to know, I'm safe. I'm safe. I'm at a military base, and they're going to take care of people, and I'll be fine. Michael…" She swallowed, tears pricking her eyelids. "Michael isn’t here. But I'll be okay. I'm safe. I…I love you, Mom. And Dad. Tell Dad I love him, too. I'll call back soon." She hung up, and the tears spilled over. She curled up in the chair, clutching her phone to her chest, and silently wept.

***

She never called her mother again. The cellular towers stopped working soon after she arrived at the base, and even when they were still working she was never able to get the call to connect. She was completely alone, she realized. She'd had no close friends before the outbreak. Some that she'd left in the States, of course, but she had no way to get in touch with them. She'd had no one over here except for Michael, and she knew she wouldn't be seeing him again.

"They execute them, you know," said an older woman a few cots down from her in the dormitory one afternoon a few days after she'd arrived at the base. "The ones who show up bit. They shoot them in the head, so they can't turn, and they burn them out on the other side of the wall, across the base."

"Is that true, Mummy?" Carrie, a six-year-old girl who slept in the cot next to her, asked, eyes wide.

"Of course not," her mother, Colette, snapped. "Suzanne is just telling stories." She shot Suzanne a look, and Suzanne turned back to her book, making a noncommittal noise.

She hoped, for Michael's sake, that it was true. That it had been quick, and he hadn't been forced to wait until the virus took him over, to become one of those…things. She hoped the part about the burning was true as well. She didn't like the idea of Michael's body rotting away in the woods, or being food for the zombies.

Because surely that's what they were. _Zombies_. She'd seen them, outside the gates, in the days since she'd arrived at the base. Their flesh had begun to decompose, the ones who'd been dead since the beginning. They were, possibly literally, animated corpses. She didn't know enough about science to know if it was even possible for the body to reanimate after death. She didn't think so, but how else could any of it be explained? She tried not to think about it.

She'd been assigned to work in the kitchens, and it was good work. She'd always liked to cook, and a few of the other kitchen workers taught her how to make bread, and together they all crafted recipes from the ingredients they had on hand. Some were hits and some were misses, but they were all food, something she didn't think anyone on the base would have had access to for much longer if they'd stayed outside.

She took on extra shifts whenever she could, because when she wasn't working she didn't have anything to do. There weren't many books on the base, so she couldn't read as much as she'd have liked. She couldn’t draw, didn't know how to knit and had done the few puzzles in the rec hall so many times she didn't even need to think about them. She'd never been much for exercise, but without anything else to occupy her, she took to walking around the perimeter of the base and along the roads and paths whenever she wasn't at work or asleep.

Sleep wasn't coming easily to her, despite being behind the walls of the base. She lay awake for hours, unable to turn off her brain, and when she finally did sleep it was fitful and fraught with nightmares.

"You should try running," Colette whispered to her one night as she tossed on her cot.

"What?" she whispered back.

"Running. You should try running. I used to run, before. It always wiped me out. It might help you sleep."

"I'm not sure I want to sleep," she murmured.

"Well, for the sake of the rest of us, you need to. When you toss and turn your cot squeaks, and it's really loud."

"I'm sorry," she said, and lay still the rest of the night, her eyes flicking around the room as her mind spun.

***

The next morning, when she came back to her cot after working the breakfast shift, there was a folded piece of clothing on her cot, with a note. _Sorry if I made you feel bad last night. I don't blame you for not being able to sleep. I can't either, even when it's quiet. I haven't had much need for these lately, thought you might want them. Hope they help. – Colette_

She held up the black cloth, letting it unfurl. Leggings. Athletic leggings.

She glanced outside. It was a gorgeous day, sunny and bright. Maybe Colette was right. Maybe running would help.

She put on the leggings and her trainers, and headed for the door. Couldn't hurt, at any rate.

***

She ran daily, regardless of the weather. Building up her stamina, her endurance, her ability to turn off her brain and just focus on the pounding of her feet on the pavement, the grass, the dirt, the mud. It was the thing that kept her sane. It was the thing that made her sleep. It was the only thing that made her sleep.

***

After a few months, the base became overcrowded, and she and some others were transferred to another military base further out, called Mullins. She didn’t care. She hadn’t grown close to anyone; she hadn’t allowed herself to, not after Michael. It didn’t matter where she was. She could run anywhere, and running was the only thing that made her feel like her world wasn’t going to collapse.

***

"You asked to speak with me, Colonel?" she said, peeking around the jamb of the Colonel's door.

"Yes, please, come in," Colonel Clarke said, indicating a chair. "Please sit."

She sat. She forced her hands and feet not to fidget. She wasn't used to staying still anymore.

"You may or may not know that we are in contact with several groups that are rebuilding themselves following the outbreak. We often run supplies to them, things like medical kits and building supplies. Typically I send two soldiers, but really, that isn't necessary. Two people is necessary, but they don't have to be soldiers. Since we’ve gotten this new influx of people, I've been toying with the idea of sending out a civilian sometimes, with a combat-trained pilot, of course. That would keep the base in better order, keeping as many of my people here as I can."

She nodded. "That makes sense."

"So. Would you be interested in being our first civilian on a supply drop? We’ll give you some basic combat training—self-defense, firearms, that sort of thing. I wouldn't dream of sending you out unarmed and unprepared, low risk or not."

She was taken aback by his request. His offer? She wasn’t sure what it was. "Why me? Sir."

Colonel Clarke smiled. "I spoke to the officers at your old base when they transferred you here, and they said you’re a dedicated worker. And I've seen you out running, regardless of the weather. You're far more fit than half of the soldiers, never mind the other civilians. And…" He paused. "They told me how, when you arrived there and learned your companion had not been allowed in, you were stoic. And you've been no-nonsense since your arrival here. Whatever job you’re assigned, you get it done quickly and efficiently. If I didn't know better, I'd think you _were_ a soldier."

She blinked, and ducked her head. "Thank you. I think."

The Colonel laughed. "It's most definitely a compliment. So, what do you say? Want to go for a helo ride?"

A beat. Then, "Actually, I think I would. Thank you."

***

The first supply drop was terrifying and exhilarating. She'd never flown much even before the outbreak, and never in a helicopter, which was _very_ different from flying in a commercial jet. And being outside the walls of the base…well, once she was inside the walls of the township they were bringing the supplies to, it wasn't really all that different. But the handful of seconds it took to run from the helicopter to the entrance to the settlement were some of the most terrifying of her life, and certainly the most terrifying since she'd arrived at the safety of the first base and she’d learned Michael had not been allowed in. She could see them, the infected. The _zombies_.

That's what Helen, her pilot, had confirmed shortly after they left Mullins Base.

_"Doing okay?" Helen asked her._

_"I forgot how much I don't like heights."_

_Helen laughed. "Easy to forget how weird flying is when it's not a thing you do on the regular. Not much air travel happening in the zombie apocalypse."_

_She looked at Helen, surprised. "Is that officially what it is?"_

_Helen rolled her eyes. "Well, no. But it's obvious, right?"_

_"I guess. I just hadn't heard any of you guys call it that."_

_"We aren't supposed to, especially around the civilians. But come on. It's absolutely a zombie apocalypse."_

_"Yeah." She looked out the window, thinking about Michael. "It sure is."_

***

She was good at the drops, she discovered. Once she got over her fear (well, she never really _got over_ her discomfort at being in the air or her terror of the zombies, but she learned to tamp them down, ignore them, get the job done as she’s been told to do), she was, as the Colonel had said, quick and efficient. She'd been in decent shape from all the running, but the muscles of her arms and back began to strengthen as well from lifting the crates off the helicopter and carrying them into whatever settlement they were visiting.

The Colonel called her back in a few weeks after that first conversation in his office.

"There's a township called Abel not too terribly far from here, and we've arranged a drop for next week. They also have asked that we send someone to assist them on a project, but I can't spare any of my people right now. Would you be willing to help them out? You'll stay on for a few days without Helen, and then we'll send her back to bring you home."

"What is the project?"

"To be completely frank, I don't know all of the details. Something to do with rebuilding, but I haven't received much information. Major de Santa is an excellent officer, but she's tight-lipped as they come about what goes on in Abel. It rarely matters, as what they do doesn't affect us, and I can't imagine there's any reason why a rebuilding project over there would be any different. So, will you go?"

"Of course."

"I'd like you to wear fatigues for this one," the Colonel told her. "I don't know if they're expecting military personnel, not that there's any reason for them to, but in the event they are, you're certainly competent enough to pass for a low rank, and it's not as though any branch of the military has been able to operate exactly as it used to. As far as I'm concerned, you're an honorary member of the armed forces at this point anyway."

"I…thank you." She ducked her head as she had in that first meeting. She knew it was meant as a compliment, but it made her uncomfortable. She didn't want to be a solider, honorary or otherwise. She just wanted to do her work, and survive.

***

The fatigues felt strange. The boots were heavy. She stuffed her trainers into her backpack, along with her now-worn leggings and a t-shirt. Long-sleeved, of course. You couldn't be too careful.

"Whatcha wearing?" one of the little boys who slept nearby asked, swinging his feet off the side of his cot. "You look like a soldier."

"Well, they're soldiers' clothes."

"You don't have a gun like the soldiers."

"You're right, I don't. I'm glad for that, to be honest. But they did teach me how to use one."

"Are you a soldier now?"

"No, but I get to go on a trip for a few days, and I guess they wanted me to blend in."

"What's blend in?"

"Look like I belong. They want me to look like a soldier."

"Why?"

"That's…a really good question, actually. I don't know."

The boy, Craig, squinted at her. "You look like a boy."

She laughed. "I certainly don't feel like myself, that's for sure." Zipping her pack shut, she said, "All right, go time. See you, kiddo. Be good."

"I'm always good," Craig told her.

She grinned. It was true; Craig was always good. Tossing a wave over her shoulder, she left the dormitory.

***

"Abel Township's just on the horizon. See it now?" Helen pointed. "Not much more than a few fences to keep the zoms out. I don't know how they live like that. Guess they won't be living like that much longer." She flicked a switch on the console, and adjusted the microphone on her headset to be closer to her mouth as static buzzed into their ears. "Abel Township, Jolly Alpha Fiver Niner from Mullins Military Base. We're five miles out, approaching from the east, bringing med supplies, shelters, and loan of one of our people. Abel Township, Jolly Alpha Fiver Niner requesting permission to land."

In her right ear, she heard a very pleasant-sounding, if slightly frazzled, man's voice saying, _"_ Got that. Uh, I, I mean, roger that. You're cleared to…yeah, you can, you can come on in."

"Roger, Abel," Helen said. "Heading down now." She flicked the switch off again and glanced over at the passenger seat. "Level with me. You and me both know we haven't got half of the usual supplies. We've lied to the township."

This was news to her. "We've…?"

"Yeah, I know, you don't know anything. Someone at Abel is gonna come up to you and say, 'I'm here to brief you on Project Greenshoot,' and then you'll find out what your mission really is."

"What my—"

Helen continued speaking over her. "I just—" There was a loud bang from outside the helicopter. "What the—someone's shooting! That's not from the township! Who the hell has a rocket launcher in this—" Another bang, and the copter shuddered and spun, the world shaking and dipping and breaking into fragments as she tried to grasp what was happening. "We're hit! I've lost the tail rotor!" Flicking the radio switch again, Helen shouted into her mic. "Mayday, mayday, mayday! Jolly Alpha Five Niner going down three miles east of Abel Township! Two souls on board!"

The radio operator from Abel said into her ear, "This is Abel Township calling. Supply copter, can you hear us? You're coming down fast. Can any of you hear us? Open your chutes! Jump! Jump!"

They jumped.


	2. Amnesia

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Smoke. Zombies. A voice in her ear.
> 
> She runs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know, it's so cliche to recap Jolly Alpha Five Niner. We all know the story, why am I recapping it? I promise I won't do it for EVERY mission. But some particularly important plot points will need to be incorporated into this ongoing work for the sake of the overall story. You all understand.

Smoke. She smelled smoke. Something was burning.

Also, dirt, and…blood? Petrol? Both?

Her head was pounding. Carefully, she opened her eyes. Bright. It was so bright, and it hurt, but she looked around anyway because she didn’t know where she was or what was on fire. She put a hand to her forehead and her fingers came away sticky and red. Despite the pounding in her head, the spot that was bleeding didn’t hurt too much, so hopefully it was superficial.

She was wrapped in a blanket, or a sheet? No, it couldn’t be a blanket or a sheet. They were in the middle of a forest, why would she be in a blanket in the middle of a forest? And—that word, “they”—she had thought “We are in a forest”, not “I am in a forest”. Where was the other—

Oh, God. Oh, God. The helicopter. The crash.

She looked down at herself. No blood. Well, no significant blood. A few scratches, but not even anything requiring bandages. The blanket was a parachute. Her uniform wasn’t even torn.

Uniform. Why was she in a uniform? A patch over her right breast said “Mullins Military Base”, and one on her left breast had the code “MMB2732”. An ID number, maybe? Why couldn’t she remember?

And—had she been flying the chopper? She didn’t think so, and she had thought, “We are in a forest”, so there had to have been someone else with her, but where was that person?

She struggled out of the straps of the chute and looked around. Where was the helo? Presumably it wasn’t too terribly far away, but who knew how far she’d floated away from it.

She did see a backpack on the ground near her. Opening it, she found some athletic clothes, a pair of running shoes, basic toiletries. She switched out her heavy military boots for the running shoes. She didn’t know how far she would have to travel before she found a place to shelter, and those combat boots were not really conducive to long-distance running. Was she conducive to long-distance running? She had no idea, but she thought so. The idea of running didn’t repulse her. And these shoes fit perfectly, so they were probably hers so she was probably a runner. Elementary, my dear Watson. Sliding her arms through the straps of the pack, she started to walk away from where she had landed, unsure where to go but knowing that staying there likely wouldn’t do her much good.

Something crunched under her foot. It was a small radio, with to a headset that must have fallen off her head in the crash. She had stepped on the headset, snapping the microphone off. It dangled uselessly, but there wasn’t really anything she could do about it.

Not really knowing why she was doing it, but feeling like it was the only thing that made sense to do, she picked the headset up, slipped it on, and headed further into the woods.

***

She fiddled with the channels on the radio as she walked. She mostly just got static, but occasionally caught a flash of a man’s voice, and English accent, just a word or two here and there. She couldn’t seem to land on the right channel and stay there long enough to get more than a few words at a time.

Suddenly, the voice came through clearer. It was pleasant, kind, exactly the sort of voice you would want to hear coming through the radio you didn’t know how to work while you wandered through the woods, away from a crashed helicopter that you couldn’t exactly remember being on.

She stopped short, listening. Not to the radio, she was fairly sure what she had heard was not static or the man’s voice, and it wasn't in the ear that the headset was on. It was a…groan? A gurgle? She strained her ears, and there it was again. Definitely a groan, and some rustling. She took a step toward the brush the sound seemed to be coming from, then another. She had a bad feeling in her gut, but she didn’t know why and tried to ignore it. What if it was the other passenger from the copter? What if they were hurt?

Suddenly, a greyish hand flailed out of the bushes, and she remembered, just as the half-rotted face followed it. The outbreak. The Grey Flu. She backed away, as the groaning grew louder and the thing making the sound came into full view. A zombie. It was a zombie.

She ran.

***

She ran blindly, unable to hear anything but the sound of her own panicked breathing and the groans and snarls from the zombies in the woods around her and the static in her right ear from the headset. And then—

The voice came back. His name was Sam Yao, he told her, he was the radio operator at Abel Township—that name tickled something in her mind, but she couldn’t grab onto it before it slipped away—and he would keep her safe. She didn’t know how he knew she was there (something about scanners, but that meant nothing to her), but he promised he would keep her safe and at that moment, that was all she cared about. She could hear the zombies behind her, to her left, to her right. They were everywhere.

She could hear the moans of the zombies fading, but she kept going, terrified. How could she have forgotten about the zombies? She wracked her brain as she ran, trying to filter through the fear and adrenaline to recall anything about her life prior to waking up on the ground ten minutes before. She couldn’t remember anything. She couldn’t even remember—

Sam, in her ear again. He could see her, he said. Could she hear him?

“Yes!” she shouted, hoping she wasn’t alerting more zombies to her location, but needing to make contact. “Yes! Help! I’m alive! I can hear you! Send help, they’re back there, and my pilot, I think...”

He couldn’t hear her. She knew he couldn’t, the microphone on her headset wasn’t even attached, it was bouncing irritatingly as she ran, but she needed to respond to him, to let him know she heard him, to keep him talking in her ear. His voice was the only thing she had right now, and she needed him to keep talking.

He told her to cut west.

She looked at the compass on her wrist—why did she have a compass on her wrist, and how had she known to look for it? Muscle memory was amazing—and she veered to the west.

Another voice buzzed into her ear. A woman—an American! She suddenly realized that her internal monologue had an American accent. Was she American? She thought she must be. She hadn’t heard another American voice in quite some time. Have I? she wondered. I don’t think so. I can’t remember…

The township, the woman (Doctor Myers, she said her name was) told her, was badly in need of medical supplies, and as she was currently heading toward the hospital, it would be extremely helpful if she could stop and pick some things up. If she couldn’t…well, Doctor Myers said, they might not be able to let her in.

A flash of indignation ran through her at the thought of being turned away from a safe haven during a zombie apocalypse because she didn’t stop to pick up a box of Band-Aids, but what other choice did she have? She could see what she assumed was the hospital. She waved her hand at the sky, unsure if they could see her on a camera or not but figuring if they could, it was the only way she had of acknowledging them, and kept running.

***

Sam was a talker. He kept up a steady stream of chatter as she ran, and she was grateful for the distraction. He’d call her Runner Five, he told her as she entered the hospital, since he didn’t know her name. They’d just lost their Runner Five, in that same hospital, so it was fitting. She’d been amazing, he said, funny and clever. She had clearly meant quite a lot to him.

Her heart squeezed at the pain in his voice. Perhaps she too had lost someone, before the crash. She didn’t know. She couldn’t remember.

She glanced around. No sign of any zombies, and she was pretty sure Sam would tell her if he saw any, but…

In addition to the supplies, Sam told her, there was some file at the hospital that Doctor Myers wanted. It had been what the previous Runner Five had been sent out to retrieve. Keep an eye out for it, he said. Since she was there anyway.

She slowed to a walk inside the building, trying to catch her breath and wrap her mind around what was happening to her as she poked around the rooms, looking for anything that might be useful enough to entice the people of Abel Township to let her in when she arrived. She was pretty sure Sam would let her in despite the doctor’s warning, he didn’t sound like the type of person who could turn anyone away during a zombie apocalypse, but if he was just the radio operator he probably didn’t have much say in who got in and who was rejected.

That had to be what this was, right? A zombie apocalypse? Why couldn’t she remember anything?

She found some bandages and a few bottles of pills and some vials and syringes and stuffed them into her bag, taking a few moments in front of a dirty mirror to clean the blood from her forehead with an alcohol pad and stick a plaster over the wound (which was, as she’d suspected, relatively superficial). She didn’t know what any of the medicines she collected were, but she figured Doctor Myers would, and they were bound to be at least somewhat useful. If Abel Township didn’t need them, maybe they could trade them for something they did need.

She passed a map of the building and found the hallway labeled “Administrative Wing”. That looked promising. Glancing around, she grabbed a broken chair leg from a dusty corner. She didn’t know if there were any zombies in the hospital or not, and didn’t know if Sam had any visuals on the interior of the building to help her out, and anyway, he’s gone quiet for the moment. A chair leg wouldn’t be much of a weapon against a zombie, but it was better than nothing.

***

Nothing. There was nothing in any of these rooms. Some computer monitors, but nothing she could easily carry. She told herself she’d check three more rooms, and then if she hadn’t heard from Sam, she would leave and start running. She’d done a cursory glance through all the rooms on the hallway before starting her more in-depth search (which still wasn’t very in-depth, she didn’t know what kind of a time crunch she was on but she did know she didn’t want to risk running in the dark, not when she was already tired and there would certainly be a load of zombies out prowling about), and she hadn’t seen anything, but one more solid check through a few rooms couldn’t hurt.

The first room had nothing. The second room appeared to also come up empty. Nothing on the bookshelves. Nothing on the desk. Nothing in the top drawers, or the bottom left drawer, but paper clips and rubber bands and some notepads. But in the bottom right drawer…a cardboard box, just an ordinary box that had originally held a stack of manila folders, according to the label, but when she opened it…a thick file, stamped “CDC”. A heavy, box-style file, not just a folder but a solid thing, very official-looking, as Sam had put it. There wasn’t time to open and go through it to see if it was actually useful, she could see the light beginning to dim through the dirty window, and knew she needed to get moving. The file wouldn’t fit in her backpack, so she clutched it to her chest and headed for the front doors of the hospital.

As she stepped outside, her headset crackled again. Sam’s voice, like a breath of air after too long spent underwater, telling her he could see her on a camera now.

She waved at the sky, feeling elated that she finally had some way to connect with Sam and Doctor Myers.

“Huh, what’s that you’re carrying?”

She held the file up, unsure where the camera was, and spun in a circle. Doctor Myers took the mic from Sam, loud in her ear, telling her not to drop that box under any circumstances. It was important, she said, so important--

Sam took the mic back, sounding panicked. A pack of zombies from the carpark were heading her way. Run, he told her; run.

She took off, not looking back, her feet pounding on the pavement. She could hear the groans and gurgles of the pack of zombies behind, but would not allow herself to look back over her shoulder. She didn’t want to know where they were, she didn’t want to know anything, all she wanted was to get this box to Abel Township and to never have to do anything like this ever again.

The zombies were gaining on her. They were practically on top of her. Why are they so fast? Are zombies supposed to be this fast? she asked herself, as Sam echoed her thoughts aloud. She ran as hard as she could, but she could feel them getting closer. Her pack was weighing her down, the box in her arms made it hard to balance properly, and tears blurred her eyes.

She could hear a zombie behind her, could hear the footsteps and the groans, could practically feel the zombie’s breath on her neck. Do zombies breathe? she wondered, then wondered how she could be thinking of something so inane at a time like this. She stumbled, caught herself, kept going.

Sam’s voice was raw in her ear; he recognized the zombie behind her. It was the old Runner Five. His dead girlfriend was chasing her, and he had to watch, and she was gripped with a rush—panic, sympathy, good old-fashioned adrenaline—that propelled her forward even faster.

She could see the township now, in front of her. Not far. Maybe two city blocks' distance. She could do this. She could make it. She just had to keep running, left foot right foot left foot right foot, as fast as she could. The dead Runner Five groaned near her shoulder, and she felt something grab at her. She squealed, lurched to the side, and ran even harder, ducking her head and leaning into the space in front of her, like a battering ram. Go, go, go, go, go!, she chanted in her mind. Go, go, go!

Soldiers yelling, and then a single gunshot. She flinched, even though she knew the bullet wasn’t aimed at her. She suspected Sam had flinched, too.

She could hear him yelling, “Raise the gates! Raise the gates!” Metal screeched and clanged, and she was through.

She was through.

She collapsed onto the dirt, still clutching the CDC file, gasping. People were everywhere, crowding around, talking over one another, so many voices, asking about food, medicine, welcoming her and asking if she was all right. And then she felt a hand on her shoulder, and looked up into the face of a young man with Asian features and a brilliant smile.

“Hey,” he said. Sam. She’d recognize that voice anywhere. That voice was the only reason she was here, instead of back in the woods, in the process of turning into a zombie herself. She nodded, tried to smile back, but gasping for air as she was she was sure it was more of a grimace than a smile.

Hollering at the crowd to step back, Sam lifted her to her feet and wrapped an arm around her back, hand under her elbow, guiding her toward a large tent labelled “HOSPITAL”.

A pretty black woman met them at the hospital door; that must be Doctor Myers. She tried to smile at the doctor, too, but her head was swimming and tears blurred her vision and she thought she might vomit. Sam gripped her elbow harder and steered her into the hospital. “Quite a day you’ve had. Let’s go get you cleaned up and something to eat, huh?”

“The file,” Doctor Myers said, holding out a hand. “May I?”

“Geez, Doc, she’s just almost died, has been running all day, the file can wait until you get her checked out and make sure she’s all right, yeah?” Sam guided her to a cot made up with soft-looking, if mismatched, sheets.

“It’s okay. I’m okay.” She handed the file to the doctor and sank gratefully onto the bed. Sam handed her a cup of water. She had never had anything amazing as that first sip of water in her entire life, she decided. Even if she couldn’t exactly remember anything about her life, she knew that sip of water was definitely the best thing she’d ever tasted.

“I can’t believe—are you sure you’re okay?” Sam asked, sitting on the cot from hers and leaning toward her. “That was a hell of a run you just did, never mind everything else you’ve been through today. Rocket launcher, helicopter crash, swarms of zombies. Rough day you’ve had.”

She tried to laugh, but it came out as a wheeze. “You could say that.” She looked at Doctor Myers, but the woman was completely absorbed in the file from the hospital. She turned her attention back to Sam. “Thank you. For guiding me.”

Sam ducked his head. “I didn’t…well. Yeah. You’re welcome. Hey, what’s your name? Now that you can, you know, actually tell me.”

She shook her head. “I don't remember. I don’t remember anything. But whoever I am, I am very pleased to meet you, Sam Yao.”


	3. I'll Run

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Being dropped into a dead woman's life is unsettling, and Runner Five isn't the only one who's feeling it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one takes place during the first few weeks of the 5K training and contains spoilers for it.

Runner training was...well, she didn't exactly know what it was. Exhilarating. Terrifying. Everything she needed and not at all what she wanted. Her feelings varied from day to day, moment to moment, depending on what was being thrown at her (sometimes literally; at one point another runner—Runner Three, she thought Doctor Myers said—had come out and begun chucking rocks at her. "How else is she going to learn to duck away from lurching zoms?" he'd argued when Doctor Myers had shouted at him for clocking Five in the shoulder. It had bruised badly, but secretly Five had thought he'd had a point, not that she'd said anything at the time--that runner seemed cocky and she didn't feel like feeding his ego by agreeing with him, even if he was right).

In general, she liked training, she thought. She didn't like the zoms, was still half-paralyzed with fear every time she left the safety of Abel, but she was learning that the zoms were usually slow and easy enough to avoid. And she liked running. Doctor Myers was taking it easy on her, building up her stamina, and there were days when she wanted to ignore the instruction to walk, days when she snuck in a few extra heel or knee lifts just because she could. She liked the burn in her lungs as she ran, the ache in her muscles, the wind in her face. 

"Ugh, I'm sorry you've got to train today," Jody had said to her one particularly misty morning as they walked to breakfast together. Jody, it turned out, had been the previous Runner Five's roommate, and so they had just shifted Five into the vacant cot in her tent. It was somewhat unsettling for Five, being dropped into this dead woman's life in basically every way, but she liked Jody, and Jody seemed to like her, and she supposed eventually it would stop feeling like she was replacing Alice and start feeling like she belonged there as herself. 

"I don't mind. I like this weather," she'd told Jody, who had looked so incredulous Five couldn't help but laugh. "What? I do!"

"You're a weird one, Five," Jody had said, and headed into the mess tent. 

More than the zoms, though, she had been spooked by Sam’s increasingly erratic behavior. He’d had a hard time calling her Runner Five, or even just Five, despite being the one who’d given her the designation. He’d insisted on following her outside the gates on a training run in her second week, and had dashed off looking for Alice’s wallet; she’d had to chase after him, Doctor Myers hollering at her to bring him back and at him to never do that again. After that run, his friends Jack and Eugene had evidently gotten worried when he didn't show up for a few meals in a row and had gone looking for him. He'd been in his tent, surrounded by everything Alice had left behind, practically catatonic. He’d apparently gone into some sort of post-traumatic shock and had to be hospitalized. She hadn’t seen or heard from him in some time, and that bothered her more than she was willing to admit to herself.

She barely knew him, but Sam had saved her life; of course she would get attached to him. She knew she was being ridiculous. He'd lost someone very important to him and he needed time to grieve; Doctor Myers was every bit as qualified, if not more so, to take her through her training drills. She didn't resent any of it, it couldn't be helped, but every time she left Abel's walls without Sam's voice in her ear she felt herself go on high alert. Logically, she knew that Sam wasn't going to keep her any safer than anyone else would, but…it was the zombie apocalypse. Logic had rather gone out the window some time ago.

Doctor Myers had assured all of the runners that Sam’s behavior was perfectly normal, that everyone handled grief differently, that her keeping him in hospital for observation was strictly to make sure he was eating and resting and not letting the memories get the better of him. Jody had told Five that she'd overheard Doctor Myers telling someone that Sam was having nightmares, really bad ones. Five felt awful for him, and utterly powerless to do anything to help.

She liked training, but was scared of it. She missed Sam, but knew she needed to let him process things on his own. She was happy to be finding a place at Abel, but she hated that that place wasn’t entirely hers. Alice was haunting her every moment. When she was asleep, she heard and saw and felt Alice close at her heels, grabbing for her as she rushed toward Abel’s gates. When she was awake, she was constantly reminded that she was almost literally running miles in a dead woman’s shoes.

She'd been walking across the courtyard by the hospital about a week after Sam had been taken off comms and had noticed him sitting on the bench near the memorial for the fallen runners. She remembered Doctor Myers saying that she was going to start sending him out for short periods of time for fresh air, so she assumed that's what he was doing. He was just sitting, staring at the memorial stone but clearly not seeing it, lost in thought.

Five had stopped, torn between wanting to go say hello and not wanting to disturb him. As she deliberated, he looked up at her and went white as a sheet. Unsure what to do, she raised a hand in a half-wave. Sam's expression darkened, and he stood and walked back to the hospital tent without acknowledging her. It was the last time she'd seen him.

For days, she couldn’t stop thinking about the incident, and finally she went to see Doctor Myers, crossing her fingers that she wouldn't see Sam while she was at the hospital.

"Runner Five, come in," Doctor Myers said when Five poked her head into the hospital tent. "What can I do for you?"

"Um." Her eyes darted around, looking for Sam, but she didn't see him. Good. She couldn't handle seeing that look on his face again. "I was wondering if I could…ask you something."

"Sure. What is it?"

"Could we…go for a walk, or something? It's just…I don't really want to talk here. If you can step away for a minute."

She could see the doctor's curiosity had been piqued. "Yeah, just let me go tell Sam that I'm stepping out." She disappeared around a sheet for a moment, then joined Five near the entrance. "I'm all yours."

Without a real destination in mind, Five began walking, with Doctor Myers keeping step with her. She opened her mouth to speak, closed it. Swallowed, trying to find her words, and the doctor waited patiently. "I don't think being a runner is the best job for me."

"What? Why would you say that? You're doing great in your training. Even Janine has said how impressed she is with how you're coming along." She stopped, causing Five to have to stop as well and turn back to her. "Is this about Runner Ten sending you out with that chained zombie that got free? Because I promise you, Five, that will _not_ happen again. Janine already read him the riot act."

"No, no, it's not that. Not at all. It's…Sam."

"Sam? What about him?"

"I don’t think he's ready for a new runner to take Alice's place. And even if you give me a different number, I think the sight of me upsets him. After all, she’s dead because of me."

“Five, she’s dead because she got bitten, and that happened long before you got here. That wasn’t your fault.”

“He had to watch someone shoot her in the head because of me.” Doctor Myers didn’t say anything, and Five started walking again. "I was walking past the park the other day and saw him sitting there, and he looked up and…" She looked up herself, realizing she'd walked them to exactly the bench where she'd last seen Sam. "He looked like he hated me. And it's not fair to him. I can be useful elsewhere. I can cook, you can put me in the kitchens. I can help Rajit with the dorms. I remember the plots of all the Harry Potter books, maybe I can help Amber with the kids and tell them what happens after book two. I want to earn my keep, I do. I just don't want to do it at the expense of Sam's feelings."

Doctor Myers was silent for a moment, looking back toward the hospital. Then, "No."  She shook her head. "I'm sorry, Runner Five, I understand where you're coming from and I appreciate that you want to spare Sam's feelings. But we need runners, and you're _good_. You're really good. We can't put you somewhere else."

"But—"

Doctor Myers’s voice softened as she said, "Five, your training is going too well for me to turn you over to someone else. At the rate you're going, you're going to be one of our fastest runners soon. Your instincts are good, and with your military training, it just doesn’t make sense to have you do something else." Five started to protest that she didn't actually _have_ military training, but she’d shown up in a military uniform, so of course she must have. She hated not being able to remember, not knowing whether to trust the evidence in front of her face or her own instincts telling her that something about that evidence wasn’t right.

Oblivious to Five’s internal debate, Doctor Myers kept talking. "Sam will be fine. We've all lost someone. Alice isn't the first runner Sam's lost, and she isn't the first person he cared deeply for to die either. He's in a bad place right now, I know, but that is _not_ your fault and you do _not_ get to accept responsibility for it. You're going to keep running, and Sam will come back to work, and everything will be fine."

Five looked at her feet. "I just don’t want to hurt him. And I know how selfish it sounds, but I don't want to see anyone look at me like that again."

"I'll handle Sam. It'll be okay, Five. However bad he's feeling, he doesn’t hate you, or blame you, or resent you in any way. That's not who Sam is. He knows it's not your fault Alice died." She narrowed her eyes. " _You_ know it's not your fault she died, right?"

"Yeah. I do." She looked up and saw the doctor still scrutinizing her. "I swear."

"Five, very few things are guaranteed in life, especially now. But I guarantee you, Sam does not hold you in any way responsible for anything to do with Alice. Something tells me you two are going to be really great friends." Five's skepticism must have shown on her face, because Doctor Myers laughed. "Just trust me on this one. You'll be besties before you know it." She glanced back at the hospital tent. "Speaking of Sam, I should probably head back and check in on him."

"Of course. Thanks for taking the time to talk to me."

"You know, we can give you a different number if you really want to. But honestly, I don't think it'll matter. Someone else will just take five later anyway, and it might confuse people if you suddenly start going by a new name. You haven't remembered anything from before the crash, I'm assuming? No given name we can call you?"

Five shook her head. "Nothing. And you're right. I'm Runner Five now. I can't just keep identity-hopping every few weeks, can I?"

Doctor Myers smiled. "No, I guess you can't. Take care, Five. I'll see you for training tomorrow."

 

 


	4. Shake It Off

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Finding Alice's sister and getting a message to her went a long way to helping Sam recover from the trauma of losing his girlfriend, but even though he's back at work and perfectly friendly, he still can't quite seem too look his new Runner Five in the eye. 
> 
> That's the least of Five's problems today, though. She's met the mystery voice from the conversation she eavesdropped on a few weeks ago, and Runner Eight doesn't seem to trust her one bit.

Doctor Myers had been at least partly right; Sam had bounced back, and while Five didn’t see anything to indicate the “besties” friendship that the doctor had sworn she and Sam would find, he had returned to help her finish her training, and he had found Alice’s sister, and he seemed to be feeling a bit better after Five helped him get a message to her. He still sometimes hesitated before he said her name, and he couldn’t quite look her in the eye, but all in all it seemed that Doctor Myers had been correct. He had just needed time. And whatever his deeper feelings were, it was quite clear that he did, in fact, care about all of his runners, including her. She wasn’t exactly in the fold yet, but Jody had taken her under her wing and the other runners were all friendly to her.

Well. Most of the other runners.

Five had absolutely no idea what to make of Runner Eight. After the cryptic conversation she'd overheard between Eight and Janine during one of her training runs (a conversation which she still hadn’t told anyone about, because what was there to say? “I overheard Janine, who scares me quite a bit, talking to Runner Eight, who I think scares me more, and it sounded like neither one of them trusts me at all”?), she had been shocked into momentary immobility when Sam called her to the gates for a decoy run and the woman she would be partnered with, a runner she’d yet to meet and who never shared meals with the rest of them, opened her mouth and the mystery voice came out of it.

She’d snapped out of it quickly enough and, aside from a moment of panic when Eight had reached over and turned off her comms and Sam’s voice was no longer in her ear, had completed the mission mostly without further issue. But Sara Smith was an intensely unsettling woman, and she clearly didn’t trust Five one bit.

When they had returned to Abel, turned in their weapons and noisemakers, and submitted to the mandatory bite check, Five went to the comms shed (even _shed_ was a bit of a generous term; it was really more of a shack), feeling Eight’s eyes on her the whole way. She hesitated at the door.

Had Sam seen what had happened out there? He must have. How did he feel about it? Even if New Canton had been hostile towards them, it seemed awfully low to stoop to this, leading a pack of zoms right to their doorstep. She didn’t think Sam would approve, but she barely knew the man. If she was being completely honest with herself, she had no idea what he would think. What he was ever thinking, really, when it came to important things. Mostly he just nattered on about Marmite and Curly-Wurlys and made fun of her when Doctor Myers made her do knee lifts.

And on the other hand—hadn’t she come down from that copter in a military uniform? Were the ethics of wartime politics really something she would be getting worked up over if she were actually in the military? Maybe Runner Eight was right. Maybe she _wasn’t_ who they all thought she was. Or rather, maybe she was—maybe she was exactly who they all thought she was, but not who _she_ thought she was. Not that she’d know one way or the other.

She put her hand on the door, steeling herself against—what? Sam congratulating her on an ambush well done? Sam refusing to look her in the eye, again, busying himself with knobs and wires as an excuse to look anywhere but at her face? Sam yelling at her for letting Eight turn her comms off? She didn’t even know what she was worried about, only that she was worried. She knocked on the door, then opened it. “Sam?”

Sam waved her in. “Okay, that’s great. Just come on back as soon as you lose them,” he said into the mic, then turned to her, switching it off. “Hey, uh, Five—listen, I want you to know that I don’t blame you at all for what happened out there. That was all Eight, I know, and I’ll have Janine talk to her. She shouldn’t have done that to you.”

“Are we…talking about the headset thing, or the zombies we led to New Canton’s front door?”

Sam blinked. “Oh. Right. I’d forgotten about the zombies to New Canton. Well, Janine will deal with that, too, but mostly I’m mad about her turning off your transmissions. At least, I’m guessing she turned yours off, too, since I didn’t hear her ask you to turn it off, but if she _did_ ask you, it’s not your fault. I know how hard it can be being the new person, wanting to get along with your colleagues, but next time—”

“There won’t be a next time,” she cut him off. “I was terrified the whole time it was off, but I didn’t know how to get it back on.”

“Yeah, we probably should have trained you on that. Sorry, I didn’t think you’d need to know how to mess with it just yet, at least not until you’re out doing missions on your own. You just sort of have to fiddle with this dial here—” he pointed to the transmitter in her hand “—and keep twisting it till you get me back. Unfortunately, there’s not much of a science to it. It’s mostly luck.”

“Thanks. I appreciate that.” She paused. “Sam, how well do you know Runner Eight?”

He glanced sidelong at her, fiddling with switches on his desk; she’d need to leave, soon, or he’d start to get that wide-eyed blinking-too-much look he got when she stayed too long and her presence started reminding him about Alice. “Sara? Oh, she’s all right. I heard some of what she said to you at the end there. She’s not quick to trust new people, and I guess I can’t really blame her, although I have the opposite problem, I trust everyone. Miracle I’m still alive, to be honest. But don’t worry about her. She’s prickly, but she’s all right.”

“Yeah. Sorry. I get it. I came out of nowhere, can’t remember anything. You all have no reason to trust me. She’s right to be wary.”

“No reason to trust you?” Sam turned in his chair to look straight at her, possibly for the first time since her arrival at Abel, and she felt the world tip sideways for a moment. The distrust in Runner Eight’s gaze was nothing compared to how unsettling it was having Sam Yao look directly at her after so many weeks of sideways glances and furrowed brows. “Five, you risked your life to pick up dozens of supplies and that mystery CDC box Maxine's losing her gourd over. You didn’t have to do that. And you’ve proved yourself again and again out there. You—you helped me find Alice’s sister, you saved Runner Six’s life, you’ve picked up so many supplies, you even helped Chris with his research even though it meant doing knee lifts inches away from a zombie. We have _every_ reason to trust you. No one here cares who anyone was before, as long as you do your work and don’t, you know, steal half the food and then run away to a secret hideout bunker.” He looked back at his desk. “Don’t let Runner Eight bother you. Like I said, she’s intense, but she’s all right.”

Five nodded, pressing her lips into a line. She knew her cue to leave when she saw it. Sam had obviously had as much New Runner Five time as he could take for today. “Yeah. Okay. Thanks, Sam. I’ll…see you.” He waved a hand at her as he studied the (empty) screen in front of him, and she let herself out the door, back into the sunshine and bustle of Abel Township.

 


	5. A Long Way Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Runner Five is lost, and the only company she has are the darkness and her rising sense of dread.
> 
> And then, she hears a voice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I mean. I'd be a pretty bad 5am shipper if I didn't write "A Voice In The Dark".

Five didn’t know where she was.

And it was getting dark.

And her headset wasn’t working.

And the panic attack she’d been trying to stave off was rapidly beginning to win. Her chest felt tight, her throat constricted, and the edges of her vision sparked between dark and bright white with every half-breath she took. She needed to focus, needed to take a few minutes and get herself under control, but she didn’t have the luxury of time right now. She could hear a zombie crashing through the woods behind her and to the left, and it didn’t sound very fast, but she couldn’t stop moving and try to beat back the panic, not yet. She pushed forward, walking rather than running, because she couldn’t run, in order to run you had to be able to breathe and she couldn’t breathe, she was lost and it was dark and there were zombies and she didn’t know why she couldn’t hear Sam but she couldn’t hear Sam and it was dark and she didn’t know where she was and she couldn’t breathe she couldn’t breathe she couldn’t breathe—

“Runner Five, Runner Five, come in, Runner Five…”

—she couldn’t breathe and she was lost and it was dark and now she was imagining that she could hear Sam but she couldn’t hear Sam because her headset wasn’t working and she couldn’t breathe—

“Can you hear me?”

—and clearly she was also losing her mind because she was _hearing_ Sam’s _voice_ but her headset hadn’t been working for hours, not since she’d dodged and ducked her way around the New Canton soldiers and run as hard as she could, harder than she’d run since her first headlong dash into Abel Township with the former Runner Five hot on her heels, out of scanner range and, apparently, out of headset range, too.

“…Runner Five…Come in, Runner Five, if you’re out there…”

She stopped thinking about her panic attack and started focusing on the voice. Sam’s voice. In her ear. Sam’s _voice_ in her _ear_. Not in her head.

“Sam!” Her voice was a croak, pushing past the lump blocking her throat, and suddenly she could breathe again. The panic abated, and suddenly her lungs were clear and she could breathe, as though the panic attack had never happened. She gulped air. “ _Sam!_ ”

“Runner Five, calling Runner Five, come in, Runner…”

He couldn’t hear her. But that was okay, because she could hear him, and if she could hear him then she must be closer to Abel than she had been a few minutes ago, which meant she was probably heading in roughly the right direction.

So was that shambler at her eight o’clock, of course, and from the sounds of it, it had heard her call out. She picked up her pace as, beyond the trees and out of sight, the sun finished its descent below the horizon.

***

She’d had no idea where she was going. There were soldiers yelling at her to stop and Janine and Sam were yelling at her to go and there were guns and she didn’t know what to do or where to go so she’d put up her hands, eyes darting from face to face among the New Cantonians crowding in on her, and she heard, distantly, as though he was a voice in her head rather than in her ear (not that she heard voices, exactly, but sometimes her inner monologue took on different…tones, one could say, or attitudes, or personalities—no, not personalities, that sounded worse than “I hear voices”, to admit that you heard voices with different personalities—and she’d always chalked it up to being literary, an avid reader and sometimes writer, and all writers heard voices, the voices of their characters, so of course she heard different character voices in her head sometimes, probably everybody did, but she'd never asked anyone about it because what if they didn't, and then she'd look like a crazy person), but she had heard Sam’s voice in the back of her mind more than in the headset, which of course was where it actually had to be, because Sam was not a voice in her head no matter how much he sounded like one, and he was telling her to run through the wall of people and get out of there, so she did. She rushed straight at them, all of a sudden, and the soldiers seemed so surprised by her sudden charge that she was able to push through and into the copse of trees bordering New Canton’s walls, and she had heard a few of them pinging shots after her but by then she was too well covered by the woods and she was safe.

But they would come after her, she could hear a few of them coming after her, and she didn’t know how far they would chase her so she just kept going, and then she found a fallen tree that made a sort of cave with its branches and leaves where it had landed up against another tree, and she crawled inside to hide, and had stayed there for what felt like forever, until the sun had begun to set and the light outside her cave had begun to dim, just in case.

They never found her, of course. She’d suspected they wouldn’t, but she had to be sure. She’d cursed herself for wearing her red Runner 5 T-shirt today; Abel runners didn’t always wear their “official” runner shirts when they went out—it wasn’t required, the shirts were really more to make new runners feel like part of the club than an actual uniform. But today, she had put it on, and she had considered bringing a jacket but it was a warm day, and it was supposed to be a quick run, an easy run, and Jody always teased her that wearing black leggings and a black jacket together made her look like a ninja, which was sort of the point, it made her feel badass and like she could take on anything. But she didn't need to be a ninja for a quick run to pick up some cables, so she had left the black jacket sitting on her bed and thus had left herself extremely vulnerable to New Canton, a bright red beacon streaking through the trees. Even in her hiding place, she couldn’t be sure they wouldn’t see her. So she had huddled among the leaves and dirt, pulling her black-clad knees to her chest to block as much of the bright color as possible, and she had waited, her headset and her sense of direction both completely silent.

***

But that had been hours ago. She had finally come out of her hiding place, filthy and feeling invisible (she hoped they weren't real, anyway) bugs crawling on her skin, and she had looked for footprints or scuffed leaves to indicate where she had come from. She figured she would go back toward New Canton, and once she was in sight of the castle she would be able to orient herself and figure out which direction she needed to go to get back to Abel.

But there wasn’t any sign of which direction she’d come from.

It was getting dark in the woods. Not nighttime, not yet, but coming up on dusk. And dusk in the woods was much darker than dusk out in the open.

She knew she had come upon the fallen tree directly in front of her, but she couldn’t remember if it had fallen across her path from left to right, or from right to left. She looked around, eyes straining in the dim light, but the ground was covered with a scattering of leaves and forest plants and she couldn’t see any signs of footfall.

_Shit._

***

In the end, she had just picked a direction and started running. Her legs had cramped up while she’d hidden, and her muscles were protesting being forced to move again, but she needed to get out of the woods. Whatever direction she was taking herself, if she got out of the woods then she’d be able to at least figure out if she was near anything, a house or a town or a strip mall or anything at all. And maybe it would be something she recognized.

But after full darkness had fallen, she had begun to feel like it was hopeless. There was no way she would ever get home.

 _Home_.

She had paused in her mental monologue at that. Was Abel home? It was the place she was living, certainly, but wasn’t Mullins Base home? That was where she had come from, after all. Maybe she had people there who were waiting for her to return, to come _home_ to them.

But no, if she had had anyone at Mullins who cared about her, they’d have sent for her, or at the very least have contacted Abel to ask about her. And to her knowledge, no one had asked about her, or given any indication they wanted her back. Janine would have told her, she was sure of it. She didn’t know Janine well, but she did know that she was a woman of honor, and she would not hide something like loved ones searching for a missing friend or family member.

No. She had no one at Mullins. That much was clear.

But she had people at Abel. She had Jody. Her roommate chattered nonstop and snored almost as much, but she was upbeat and friendly and had made Five feel welcome from the moment they had met.

She had Molly, the little girl she had found in the field not long ago, and her father Ed, who had been married to Becca, who before she had gone grey had been kind to Five and Jody, and Ed was kind as well, and Molly was adorable and looked like her mum and she had taken a liking to Five, and Five to her.

She had Evan, Runner Seven, who was not exactly a friend, but she liked him, and Chris McShell, Runner Ten, who, yes, had almost gotten her killed during her training, but he felt _really_ terrible about it and had tried to give her his morning coffee and tea rations for a week afterward before she had finally convinced him that she was fine and had been happy to be able to help him with his research (as long as he never asked her to do knee lifts in spitting distance of a zombie ever again).

She had the other runners, most of whom she didn’t know well, but all of whom had welcomed her openly and many of whom seemed keen to get to know her better.

She had Doctor Myers, also not exactly a friend, but certainly more than an acquaintance.

She had Jack and Eugene, the "radio boyfriends", as they were referred to among the runners, and again, she didn’t know them well, but she liked them and enjoyed their company at the runners’ table at mealtimes.

And she had Sam. Sam, with whom she’d had such a contentious start, but had fallen into a pattern of…what, exactly? They didn’t talk much, but they had a sort of easy co-existence now. Jack and Eugene had gotten him to come back to the dining hall for meals after he had been released from the hospital, and he too sat at the runners’ table, and sometimes he sat across from or next to Five and it wasn’t weird, anymore.

Yes. Abel was home. And she needed to get back to it.

***

 She still didn’t know exactly where she was, but she was out of the woods (literally at least, if not figuratively), and she wasn’t alone anymore; there was a voice in her ear in the darkness, and he was telling her that he needed her to come home before they had to bar the gates. She was his friend, he said, he felt they had a sort of simpatico even though they didn’t talk much, and he wanted her to come home.

She wanted to come home too. She had shaken off the shambler and she slowed a bit, walking to catch her breath, scanning the darkness for the red beacon on top of the tower at Abel. She couldn’t see it, but she heard moaning in the woods to her right and in the field to her left.

Time to run again.

***

She could hear the worry and exhaustion in Sam's voice. It was the middle of the night; it had to be ten o’clock, at least. She was on a road, with a field of crawlers to her left and God knew what in the woods to her right. She couldn’t see the beacon, not yet, but the static in the headset had faded so she’d heard every word Sam had said about ice cream rolls (she could not _believe_ he’d woken Janine up—gone to her house and knocked on her door and woken her up—to ask about the structure of ice cream rolls) and wanting to be on the radio and failing out of his engineering classes at uni.

She had cried silently, not wanting to attract more zoms than she knew were already aware of her, when he talked about his parents and his sister. She had laughed silently when he had talked about the kid in his class who had picked his nose. She had stopped laughing when he had wondered who would remember any of them when they were gone.

And then she saw the light.

It was faint, so faint, and she thought she was imagining it, but she stopped running and stood, squinting, opening and closing her eyes in the darkness, and when they were closed it was dark and when they were open it was dark, too, but with a pinpoint of red light ahead. And she clasped her hands to her chest and let out a single, silent, enormous sob, because she was on the road to Abel, she was going _home_.

And she ran.

***

He could see her. Sam could see her, and he was shouting, and she was running, and tears blurred her vision, but she could see the beacon on the tower and Sam could see her and the light was getting bigger and brighter and she didn't feel her shirt sticking to her back with sweat and her hair plastered to her face with tears and dirt and she didn't hear the zombies moaning their nighttime moans, she didn't hear her labored breathing, she didn't hear her feet pounding on the ground, all she heard was Sam in her ear, cheering for her, guiding her, and then she heard the gates opening in front of her and then closing behind her as a door banged against corrugated metal and then she did hear footsteps pounding on the dirt only they weren't hers, they were Sam's, and there he was, laughing and crying and hugging her and she was laughing and crying and hugging him and Janine was following after him and the gate guards were saying they were glad she was home and Doctor Myers was coming out to see what the commotion was and then she was being led to the hospital tent for a bite check and a bath and she was home.

She was home.


	6. Long Day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Home safe after her harrowing midnight run, an exhausted Five has something important to tell someone before she can let herself go to bed.

She hadn't been bitten; she'd known this, but protocol was protocol and she didn't argue with Doctor Myers about the bite check. Normally, she looked forward to the bite checks, because they were followed by a shower or bath, and tonight of all nights she badly needed to rinse the dirt and sweat and the smell of fear from her body. But tonight, she didn't care about the bath, barely registered the feel of the warmish water sluicing over her skin and through her dirt-and-leaf-matted hair. Doctor Myers had lent her some clean clothes—the hospital kept a supply of them for occasions like this—and once she was clad in a too-big lime green shirt proclaiming "FITNESS FACTORY" in bright-pink letters (it was horribly garish, but for whatever reason the hospital had surprisingly large supply of these shirts) and a pair of bright pink shorts with the same lettering across the butt in lime green (also in abundant supply at the Abel hospital), she slipped her bare feet back into her filthy trainers and, carrying the bundle of her equally dirty clothes, left the hospital tent.

But instead of going to her room, though the promise of being lulled to sleep by her roommate's rhythmic snoring called to her, she went to the metal shack that housed the comms equipment and, she suspected, its operator, despite the late hour, and tapped gently on the door. "Sam?"

She heard movement inside the shack, and then the door opened. Sam, looking tired and bleary, stood blinking at her in the doorway. "Five. You look…bright."

She looked down at herself and cracked a half smile. "Hospital tent couture." A breeze picked up, whispering over her exposed arms and legs and her damp hair, and she shivered.

"Are you—come in," Sam said, stepping back. "It's cold, you're probably hungry, I can make tea. It's not very good tea, but it's something. And I have Marmite, and crackers. Did Maxine feed you? Or, if you want to just go and sleep, you should do that, it's been a long day, you're probably exhausted…" He trailed off awkwardly, but she was already through the door, closing it behind her.

"Tea sounds nice. If—if you don't mind," she said. "You're tired too. I can let you sleep."

"No, no, tea is great. I'll make tea." He turned to rummage in a basket under the small table that held an electric kettle and an assortment of chipped mugs. "It's not real tea, it's some herbal thing, chamomile or lemongrass or—ginseng, it says ginseng. I don't even know what ginseng is. But it's warm, at least. They won't let me take the real stuff from the dining hall, but sometimes the runners bring me the herbal stuff they find on runs, because they know how it gets cold in here and the kitchens don't care as much about the ones that don't have caffeine." He was rambling, pouring bottled water into the kettle and plopping tea bags into mugs. As the water heated, they stood there, staring at their feet, at the walls, anywhere but at each other.

"Do you want to sit?" he asked her, just as she blurted out, "Thank you."

"Oh," she said, "sure," as Sam replied, "What?"

They both laughed self-consciously. Sitting down on the faded futon, she placed her running kit on the floor by her feet and repeated, "Thank you. For tonight. I…you saved me out there. Again."

Sam flushed, turning to busy himself pouring water into the mugs. "I was scared for you."

"I was, too," she admitted, taking the mug he handed her. It was patterned with small blue and yellow flowers.

"What happened?" Sam asked her. "If you…that is, if you want to talk about it." He hesitated before sitting next to her on the futon, rather than in his chair by the desk. The comms shack was small enough that either choice would have put him about the same distance from her, but she had the thought, deep at the back of her mind, that it was the first time he'd had the option to sit by her versus somewhere else and taken it. At meals, he didn't sit next to her if there was another seat available. She didn't know if it was a conscious choice on Sam's part, but she had noticed it, and that tiny part at the back of her mind that noticed the change tonight was pleased.

"I got lost," she said, sipping her tea. She didn't know what ginseng was, either, and she wasn't sure she would have chosen it out of a variety pack, but the lukewarm liquid (Sam, in his discomfort, hadn't let the water heat long enough) still went a long way toward warming her chilled body. "You told me to run, so I did, and I hid in the woods, but by the time I felt safe to come out I'd forgotten which direction I'd come from."

"God, Five," Sam whispered. "Do you have any idea how lucky you are, that you found your way home in the dark without being attacked?"

"Simpatico," she replied, and he screwed up his face in confusion. "My headset wasn't working, and I was having a panic attack, and then suddenly I heard you telling me we had a simpatico and you thought we could be friends, and I was able to breathe again and pick a direction to start running in."

Sam rubbed a hand across the back of his neck, flushing. "I probably sounded like an idiot. Blathering on about ice cream rolls."

"Did you actually wake Janine up to ask her how they were made?" Five asked, and Sam laughed sheepishly.

"I did, yeah. She was really mad about that." They both laughed, then, real laughter, and it did more to warm the chill Five had been fighting off for hours than the bath or tea had done.

When her giggles had subsided, she looked Sam full in the face, something she rarely did on account of the uneasy nature of their relationship. "I do want us to be friends, Sam."

His own laughter faded as he looked back at her. "I do, too, Five. I'm…I'm sorry for how things went at the beginning."

Five shook her head. "You have nothing to apologize for. It was…circumstances."

"Yeah," he said. "Still."

They sat in silence for a few moments, sipping their tea, and then Five said, "They'd be proud of you, I think."

Sam started a bit at the suddenness of her voice in the relative silence of the comms shack. "Who?"

"Your parents. They'd be proud of you, what you do here. You keep the runners alive and safe, and they keep the rest of the township fed and clothed. You're almost single-handedly responsible for the well-being of Abel."

Sam snorted. "Don't tell Janine you said that."

"You kept me alive tonight. And that first day. And I know you've done the same for others."

"It's my job."

"It's our lives." He didn't have a response to that. "It's not a small thing, Sam. Not to us. Not to the people who depend on us. It doesn't matter how good the actors are, if the stage manager isn't good at what he does, the whole production falls apart."

He considered her words. "I suppose you're right about that. Thanks, Five. That…that means a lot."

"You're welcome." Sam yawned then, and she stood, gathering her pile of dirty clothes from the floor. "You're exhausted. I should let you go to sleep."

Sam stood as well, taking her empty mug and setting it back on the small table with his own. "I'm not the one who's been running all day. You need the sleep more, I think."

"Sometimes emotional strain is just as exhausting as physical strain. I heard you today. You sounded so scared, and you look drained. I think we probably both need to sleep, and to sleep late."

He walked her the three steps to the door, hesitating with his hand on the knob. "I _was_ scared, Five. I was terrified for you."

She smiled a wry smile at him. "I bet. You're probably starting to wonder if the number five is cursed."

He shook his head. "No, I wasn't just afraid of losing another runner, I was scared for _you_. And—I'm really, really glad you came home safe." He touched her elbow then, and it was the first time she could remember him voluntarily touching her in the entire time she'd known him, outside of the heat-of-the-moment hugging and helping her walk to the hospital after she'd arrived at Abel that first day, and earlier tonight. Those touches hadn't been deliberate, they'd been driven by circumstance, adrenaline, and in the case of that first day, an actual physical need on her part for help standing. This, though, was the touch of one friend to another; a touch that said "you matter to me"; a touch that held the promise of no more awkwardness, no more wondering if her sheer existence was causing a person she cared about pain.

Five looked down at his hand on her elbow and placed her own over it. "Simpatico," she said, and smiled at him. She stepped away, through the door as he opened it and followed after her, locking it behind them with a padlock.

He chuckled. "Yeah. Simpatico. Sleep well, Five."

He disappeared into the darkness to his dorm, and she went the other way to hers, and for once she didn't dream of walking corpses and fear, but of a faded futon and a mug with blue and yellow flowers on it, and a kind voice telling her to come home.


	7. Big Girls Don't Cry

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Five is surprised to learn no one at Abel thinks of her as being much of a talker, but maybe all the talking she does is in her head. Five does a lot of talking in her head.

Five liked the park in Abel. It wasn't much of a park, just some flowers and trees and bushes with paths worn into the grass around and between them, but there were benches, and shade, and the memorial for fallen runners. She hadn't known any of the fallen runners, none had died since she'd arrived, but she knew Sam liked to go there to think about Alice and the other friends he'd lost, and she had taken to wandering the trails through the plants herself. After she met Lem, she found herself at the memorial stone more and more.

She couldn't remember having lost anyone before she'd arrived at Abel. She knew she must have done, there was no way everyone she knew had survived, but she couldn't remember it so it didn't hurt. And she hadn't _known_ Lem, but he'd been kind, and had distracted the zoms so she could get away easily, and he had had someone at New Canton—his radio operator, it sounded like; his Sam—who had loved him very much, and whom he had loved. After she had returned to Abel with Lem's headset, she had gone to the park and sat on the ground by the memorial stone. Runners were runners, no matter which township they ran for, and as Lem had said to her, only runners understood how it was out in the field. Most days even Five didn't feel like she understood it the way Jody and Sara and Evan did, a fact Jody had told her was ridiculous, given the circumstances of her arrival at Abel and her night stuck outside the gates. "Most of us haven't dealt with anything like that," she had told Five. "I think you get what it's like to be a runner more than a lot of the people who've been doing it since the beginning." So Five had gone to the memorial stone and sent up a silent prayer for Lem.

Five wasn't religious. The same way she had come out of the wreckage of her helicopter knowing that she didn't like tomatoes and that summer thunderstorms made her happier than almost any other weather, she had known that she didn't have any particular feelings about God. But she also knew that even if you weren't religious, you could still be spiritual, and some moments called for well-wishes and good thoughts to be sent into the ether. This was one of those moments, and so she sent them.

_Thank you for what you did to help me today, Lem. You didn't have to do that. I hope that you’re at peace, and that the girl you loved—Nadia, I think you said?—I hope she finds peace too. You did a kind thing today, Lem, and I hope your Nadia can take some comfort knowing that you went out saving someone from meeting the same fate as you._

She had pressed her fingers against the stone then, feeling the sun-warmed roughness under her skin, and closed her eyes. She sat like that for a moment, kneeling in the dirt, and then stood and went to change out of her sweaty running kit. She didn’t know Sam had been watching her from the window of the comms shack, thinking how this new Runner Five was so different from Alice while at the same time being so very like her.

***

A few days after Lem, Five returned from a run shaken and again found herself wandering the paths of the park as, again, Sam watched her through the window.

"I'll be right back," he said to Janine, who was under his desk, rewiring something. He ignored her protests and half-walked, half-ran out the door of the comms shack and into the park.

"Hey, Five," he said, catching up to his runner. "You okay?"

Five looked up. "I—sure. Why?"

Sam tapped the side of his head. "Simpatico, remember? I could see you through the window, and you just looked…I dunno, you looked not-okay." Five didn't say anything, just fiddled with a blade of grass she'd pulled out of the ground. "I mean, you look _okay_ , you look good, blue is a nice color on you—I mean, um…" Sam blushed, and Five pretended not to notice. "What I meant was, you looked like something was bothering you, and I thought, you know, if you wanted someone to talk to, I know I talk a lot but, fun fact about me, I'm actually also a pretty good listener." Five flicked the blade of grass away and tugged a leaf off a tree. Sam watched as she split the stem with her thumbnail and pulled the stem of another leaf through it, beginning a chain. "You don't have to talk, if you don't want to. I know you're not a big talker."

Five looked surprised at that. "I'm not?"

Sam blinked. "Well, I mean, you don't…seem to be," he finished lamely.

"Hm," Five said, threading another leaf into her chain. "I guess you're right." Sam waited as she concentrated for a moment on her leaves, unsure if she was going to speak but wanting to give her the opportunity if she wanted it.

She did, it turned out. "I was thinking about Helen."

Sam waited for her to elaborate, but she didn't. "I…sorry, Five, I don't know who Helen is."

"She was my pilot. From the helicopter. Runner Eight and I found her today."

"Oh," he said. "Was she…?"

"Turned," Five said softly. "She was still half-strapped into her seat. She'd…a lot of her had been eaten. But she was still alive. Or, not-alive, I guess. I had to lead her away so Eight could get the supplies from the wreckage."

"I see."

"Eight found my ID, too."

Sam's eyebrows went up. "Oh yeah?"

Five studied her leaf chain. "I had hoped going to the crash site might jog my memory, but it didn't. And my ID had a picture and an identification number on it, but no name. I still don't know who I am."

"I'm sorry."

Five was silent for a few moments again. Then, "I left her behind. Helen. I ran, and she was trapped in that helicopter, and the zombies got her." Her eyes were shining with unshed tears. "I left her to get eaten alive."

"Five…you didn't know. You came down far enough away from the helo, you didn't know where it was, and you had to save yourself."

"I remembered that someone else had been in the copter with me and I ran anyway. I didn't even think about looking for them. I just ran."

"Five…" Sam stood uncomfortably, watching her fight back tears as she stood there, holding her chain of leaves. He reached out a tentative hand and placed it on her shoulder, and her tears spilled over. "You didn't know, Five. You didn't know where she was and you had a bunch of zombies after you. And I told you to run. It's not your fault." He pulled her to him, putting his arms awkwardly around her. She stiffened, but after a few seconds her hands came around his back and she relaxed. "It's not your fault."

He held her as silent tears slipped down her cheeks, dampening the shoulder of his hoodie. The moment seemed to last forever and also to be over almost instantly, as she pulled away, wiping her eyes.

"Thanks, Sam." She stepped back. "I think I…thanks."

"Anytime, Five."

 She turned away. "I should go clean up. I'll see you later."

"Sure." He called after her as she walked down the path toward her dorm. "I mean it, Five. I'm here, if you need to talk. Simpatico, and all."

Five turned, walking backward as she smiled a still-teary-eyed smile at him. "'Bye, Sam." And then she was gone, and Sam was alone in the park, a discarded chain of leaves at his feet.


	8. Say Goodbye

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Even the best and brightest are not invincible.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just realized I never posted this back when I wrote it. Whoops! I can't let Runner 10's death go unmentioned though. I liked that guy.

She had liked Chris McShell. Even though he had once made her do knee lifts within an arm's reach of a particularly angry zombie. Even though he had a tendency to focus a bit too hard on his research and sort of forget about the human element of the experiments (namely, the human doing knee lifts next to a zombie). He was nice, and she had learned a lot from him. Plus, anyone who offered her his caffeine rations as penance for almost getting her killed was okay in her book, even if she turned down the offer.

She couldn't believe he'd gotten himself bitten. He was too smart to make such a careless mistake, how had that _happened_?

And listening to Sam and Dr. Myers talking to him as he died, while she ran to his house to retrieve a message for his daughter—God knew how they'd find her, but they _would_ find her, she would make sure of that—and then listening to them weep softly over their friend's corpse as she ran back after completing her mission…

She hated the zombie apocalypse.

When she got back to Abel, after she had handed over the recording for Veronica and submitted to her bite check, she had gone to her room, where she found Jody knitting on her bed. She looked up at Five, and Five swallowed. Jody and Chris had been close—exactly how close, Five didn't know, but before she had arrived at Abel they had been trapped in a house with a murderer for a few days, with Chris blinded by pepper spray, and they had formed a bond. "Um…Chris died."

Jody blinked and looked down at her yarn. "Yeah, I…I knew it was coming. I went to see him before you went out on your mission. Did you…did you get the thing he wanted? For his daughter?"

Five nodded. "I'm going to go over to the memorial stone and say goodbye. I didn't know if you'd want to come or if you'd rather be alone."

Jody set aside her knitting. "I think I'd like to come. If you don't mind."

They walked to the garden in silence, sat on the bench opposite the stone, looked around at the flowers and the trees. "It's weird that he's gone," Jody said. "Out of everyone, I thought he'd be the last one standing. He knew better than anyone how to avoid getting bitten."

Five didn't say anything. After a moment, she felt Jody's shoulder shaking against hers as the other woman broke down. Five put an arm around her friend and held her as she cried, tears slipping silently down her own face.

***

Sam, returning to the comms shack after sitting with Chris and Maxine—he couldn't bear to be there when Maxine did…whatever she did to make sure Chris didn't turn—saw Five and Jody sitting on the bench in the garden, hunched over one another. He glanced at the padlock on the door to the shack, then turned in the direction of the garden.

"Hey, guys," he said softly as he approached. Five looked up, her cheeks damp; Jody kept her eyes squeezed shut, her face blotched and her hands clenched into fists in her lap. "Can I…would you mind horribly if I sat?"

Five shook her head, and Sam sat down on the other side of Jody. After a moment, he put an arm around her, his sleeve brushing Five's arm, and the three of them sat until Jody decided that what Chris would want more than anything was for them to all go share some of her private chocolate stash.


	9. Unbelievable

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just because something is the best choice, doesn't mean it's right.

"I don't like this," Five announced as Janine slipped Lem's headset transmitter into her pack and Sam fiddled with some dials to calibrate it. "Lem giving me his headset, it wasn't for this."

Sam stopped fiddling with his dials and looked at her, eyebrows raised. Probably because Five didn't voice her opinion much, and especially not to Janine, who she was still more than a little intimidated by.

It was Janine who answered. "Runner Five, New Canton is planning to attack us. This is our best shot at finding out when and how."

"I know, but—"

Janine leveled her gaze at Five, and Five's mouth snapped shut. Janine was a scary woman. "Runner Five, do you or do you not want to save Abel Township? Because if you don't, you're quite welcome to run yourself right out of those gates and over to New Canton. If they'll have you."

Five looked at her feet, feeling very small. "I didn't say I wouldn't do it. I just said I didn't like it."

"No one _likes_ war, Runner Five," Janine said, pressing her lips into a grim line. "But you know better than most that desperate times often call for unpleasant actions."

Five didn't bother to correct her. She'd tried to say, _I'm not military_ so many times in the months she'd been at Abel, but she rarely got the words out without being talked over, and even if she did, she trailed off before finishing the thought. After all, Runner Eight had found her military ID. If she wasn't military, she was at least military-adjacent. Probably.

It didn't matter. Janine was steering her towards the gates and the team who would run interference for her, and Sam was in her ear, and it was time to run, whether she liked it or not.

*** 

She didn't dislike New Canton, not really. She wasn't overly fond of them as a whole, after they had tried to capture and shoot her and then gotten her trapped outside in the middle of the night, but she had quite liked their Runner Twenty, Archie, when they had met at Jeffro Complex. And she felt really, really awful about what she was surely doing to their poor comms operator, running around with Lem's transmitter in her pack. She'd have felt awful about it even if Lem and Nadia hadn't been a couple, but knowing that they were just made her feel worse. Every time she came up on Nadia's scanner, not only did the poor woman have the hope that her runner was alive, she also had the hope that her boyfriend was.

Five had made her distaste for these missions quite clear on numerous occasions, but Janine was the boss, and she was right that it was the best chance they had to thwart New Canton's attack. But just because Janine was right didn't mean she was actually right.                                                              

"I mean, yeah, it's pretty uncool to make her think her dead runner isn't dead," Sam said when Five brought it up to him. She had taken to visiting him in the comms shack sometimes when he was running a particularly dull mission. He no longer avoided eye contact with her, or stumbled over her name. They had, slowly and tentatively, become actual friends, just as Doctor Myers had predicted they would, and she knew she could express her concerns to him without fear of him getting her into trouble with Janine.

"He wasn't just her runner, Sam," Five said. "How would you feel if Alice's tracker started showing up on your scanner?"

He looked sick. "Look, I'm not saying I like it. But Janine is right, Five. It’s our best shot to keep ourselves safe against New Canton's attack. We don't really have any other options."

She sighed, and stood up. "I know. I just…it feels gross." She left the comms shack, and didn't return until Janine called her for the next mission.


	10. Maggie May

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the wake of Abel's destruction, Five picks herself up and carries on. Because when you are all that is left of your people, you alone have to be who you want those people remembered as.

Maggie was dead. Sara was probably dead. Sam and Janine and Jody and Jack and Eugene and Doctor Myers and everybody she loved at Abel were probably dead. She was alone, high on a hill, looking at Abel Township—her _home_ —smoking and crumbling to the ground below, and she had the voice of the New Canton radio operator, Nadia, the woman she'd been deceiving for weeks into thinking her dead boyfriend wasn't dead, in her headset, telling her to come to New Canton, telling her she knew she wasn't Lem, and Five could hear the anger in her voice, and she couldn't blame her, she couldn't blame her one bit, she had known it would end like this, she had _told_ Janine it was a bad idea to use the New Canton headset like this…

Janine.

Janine was probably dead.

They were all probably dead.

She couldn't hear anyone besides Nadia on her headset. She couldn't hear Sam, couldn't hear Jody, couldn't hear Evan, couldn't hear Sara. Couldn't hear Maggie. The comms were probably shot even if they weren't all dead, so of course she couldn't hear them.

Except Maggie. Not hearing Maggie, that had nothing to do with the comms or the explosion or the smoke. Maggie, the girl who could do a spot-on impression of almost everyone at Abel, who provided color commentary through every Abel movie night, quietly, at the back of the room, making all the other runners gasp for breath and hold their sides as they tried to keep their laughter in so as not to disturb anyone else. The girl who had been among the first to welcome Five to Abel, to beckon her over to the runners' table at her first mealtime in the dining room, to offer up her coffee rations because she "didn't need caffeine, who needs caffeine when you can get high on the thrill of survival?". The girl who could fly a helicopter, apparently, and ran the like wind.

Maggie was dead. Maggie had died, alone, ripped apart by child zombies. And no one had even had a moment to grieve for her because in the next moments, the world had exploded. Or at least, Five's had.

Nadia's voice in her ear, taunting her, was the last thing she needed. She needed to run, she needed to grieve, she needed to go back to Abel and see what, if anything, could be salvaged from the wreckage of her home. She no longer had the emotional reserves to feel bad about what she and her team had done to Nadia, tricking her with Lem's headset. Everything she had, every ounce of energy and emotion and thought she had in her body, was screaming for her to turn around, to run away from New Canton and back to Abel, to find Janine and Doctor Myers and Sam, to put out the fires and bury her dead. There would be so many dead.

And then—"Runner Five, it's Major De Santa. I'm back."

Five stood on the hill listening to the Major, a woman she'd never met but who could very well be the last surviving member of Abel Township, of her family, telling her on a secured comms channel to dump Lem's headset and to go to New Canton. "It isn't ideal, certainly, but it's our only option. Abel isn't in any shape to house anyone right now, I'm guessing, and New Canton is telling me that any survivors will be welcomed warmly. I don't believe that for a moment, quite frankly, but they don't have to be warm as long as their showers are."

And so Runner Five followed orders, as she'd been trained these last few months to do. She took off Lem's headset, removed the transmitter from her bag, and left them both in the dirt. She did not run to New Canton; had she been heading to Abel, she'd have run faster than she'd ever run in her life. But she did not want to go to New Canton, and so she walked, allowing herself to cry for her lost comrades. For Maggie. For Sara, whom she had been intimidated by and afraid of up until the end, when suddenly she wasn't. Standing on that hill, looking through Sara's binoculars at a pack of zombies holding a rocket launcher, hearing the other woman tell her to get up, to run, that she had checked Five over and Five hadn't been bitten but she herself probably had; in those moments, Runner Eight was not a person to be wary of. She was a fellow runner, a fellow Abel Townshipper, and she was dying.

And Five missed her. And Maggie. And all the others she knew she would likely never see again. So Five did not run to New Canton. She walked, and she cried, but when she arrived at the gates of the castle that housed her sometimes-enemy, her breathing was even and her eyes were clear and her heart was steeled against what was to come. Whatever it was, she would endure it. Because she was Runner Five, and she was possibly all that was left of Abel Township, and whatever else was to come, she would see that Abel Township, that Sara and Maggie, that all the people who had become her people, were grieved for and remembered.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hate that poor Runner Six, Maggie Doane, didn't get a proper goodbye. She was barely in the main app, but she had some good moments in the 5k and no one seemed to react to her death at all except for Jody saying she'd been bitten. And yeah, I get that they were all a little preoccupied at the time, but still. My Five always liked Maggie and was sad to see her meet such a gruesome and lonely end.


	11. Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She mustn't dwell. Not today.
> 
> Today, she was home.

They weren’t dead.  
  
 _They weren’t dead_.  
  
Five’s eyes swam and she blinked back the tears. Sam and Janine, they were alive. Maxine was alive. Jody was alive. Simon was alive. Eugene was alive. Somehow, by some miracle, they were alive. The Major stopped speaking and raised an eyebrow.  
  
“Runner Five, are you quite all right?”  
  
Five nodded. Blinked. A tear escaped, tracking down her face, and the Major softened. “I wish we could bring you back to Abel, Runner Five, but we can’t yet. Not permanently. But I think we can arrange a day trip, if you’d like. I know everyone there would like to see you.”  
  
Another tear chased the first. “I—yes. Please. I would like that very much, Ma’am.”  
  


***  
  


She was winded; she hadn’t been pacing herself properly. Pushing herself too far, too fast, desperate to see for herself that they were all right. She shouldn’t be this winded. But she couldn’t slow down. She forced one foot in front of the other, each step drawing her closer to Abel. Closer to home. Her lungs burned, her shins ached, her shirt stuck to her back, but how could she slow down?  
  
Maybe she should have taken the Major up on her offer of a transport between New Canton and Abel. It would have been faster, probably. Safer, for sure. But she’d been too full of energy and emotion to accept. She needed to get out, needed to run, and frankly, she would have felt strange rolling up to Abel in a Jeep. She didn’t ride to Abel. She ran to Abel. She was an Abel runner. It was her job to run to Abel.  
  
But she hadn’t done much running in the days she’d been at New Canton, and even that short time off had thrown her off her game. Add to that the adrenaline she was feeling at seeing her Abel family again, and she was just asking to fall on her face if she wasn’t careful.  
  
As she crested the hill, she saw Abel in the distance, and her breath caught. She forced herself to slow, to stop, to take it in and get her breath back.  
  
Abel Township, battered and broken as it was, was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen.  
  
The last time she had stood on this hill, she had watched her home burn. Had cried for her friends, who had, in her short time at Abel, become family. Had said goodbye to Sara Smith, one of the bravest, best, and most terrifying people Five had ever met. Had steeled herself to head to New Canton and start over once again, this time with the memory of what she had lost tearing at her heart.  
  
Now, as she started down at Abel, no longer smoking, she could see people moving around within its walls. Her people.  
  
She took a deep breath, ignored the weight pressing on her chest, and started down the hill.

 

***

  
“Runner Five!” Joel cried out from the watch tower as she approached the gates. His craggy face split into a wide grin, he clambered down the ladder as the gate slowly raised. “Aren’t you a sight for sore eyes! Thought we’d never see you again!”  
  
Five smiled as the big man wrapped her in a bear hug. “It’s really good to be back, Joel. I missed you all.”  
  
“Are you back for good, then?”  
  
“Not for good, no. Major de Santa wants to keep me at New Canton for the time being, until Abel is built back up enough to start bringing people back home.”  
  
“Well, for however long we’ve got you back, I’m glad to see you. And I know I won’t be the only one. Let’s get you inside and show you off, eh?” He turned her and led her through the gate, lowering it behind them.  
  
Five looked around. Buildings were ruined, rubble was everywhere, but it was still undeniably Abel. The hospital tent flapped open and Maxine came rushing out, Janine trailing behind her.  
  
“Runner Five!” Maxine raced up to her, wrapping her in an embrace. Five hugged her back. “It’s so good to see you, Five. We thought—well, we didn’t know what to think, and obviously we _hoped_ —but when we lost comms with you and Runner Eight, we assumed the worst. You can’t imagine how happy we were to hear from the Major that you were all right.”  
  
“I think I can,” Five replied, “if it’s anywhere near as happy as I was to learn you hadn’t all been blown up like I thought.”  
  
Janine caught up to them, and held out a hand. “Runner Five. I trust New Canton has been treating you well?”  
  
Five looked at her outstretched hand, then stepped past it and threw her arms around Janine. The other woman stiffened for a moment, then patted Five awkwardly on the back. “Yes. Well.”  
  
Five laughed and released her. “I’m sorry, Ma’am. Don’t know what came over me.”  
  
Janine’s eyes crinkled and she pulled Five back in for another hug. “Well, I suppose if there are times and places when protocol is particularly important, there are also times and places when it can be ignored. It’s good to see you safe, Runner Five.”  
  
A door banged. Five looked over Janine’s shoulder at the source of the sound. The Comms shack had, miraculously, not been destroyed, and its occupant was walking toward the small group standing in the courtyard. Sam’s hair stood up and there were dark smudges under his eyes, but he smiled when he saw her. “Runner Five! You’re back!”  
  
“He’s been worried sick about you,” Janine said softly. “Didn’t sleep at all until we heard from the Major that you were safe. It was appalling how useless he was those first few days.” She pushed Five gently toward him. “Come to the hospital tent for a bite check when you’re done, Five. Maxine and I will wait for you there.”  
  
Five nodded, and walked toward Sam. “It’s…it’s really good to see you, Sam.”  
  
He didn’t say anything, just wrapped his arms around her, holding her tight. She hugged him back, breathing in the scent of Marmite and soap. After a moment he pulled back, and his eyes were shining. “I was afraid we’d lost you, too,” he murmured. “We lost so many, that day. I was scared we’d lost you too.”  
  
Her heart swelled. “It takes more than a rocket launcher and a couple of zombies to take me out, Sam. You know that.” She grinned, and he grinned back, and put his arms around her again.  
  
“I’m really, really glad to hear that,” he told her. “Let’s go get you bite-checked, and then we’ve got lunch waiting for us. I even managed to talk the kitchen into brewing up a pot of coffee for your visit.”  
  
“You’re a good man, Sam Yao,” she said, giving him one last squeeze before turning to the hospital tent. “One of the best.”  
  
Sam followed, tossing an arm over her shoulder. “Yeah, well, everyone knows New Canton only gives coffee to the medical staff and runners who are going out on missions that day. It’s self-preservation, really. I’ve seen you uncaffeinated. You’re scarier than the zoms.”  
  
Five punched him lightly in the shoulder, laughing. God, it was good to be home, if only for a few hours. Walking into the hospital tent with Sam, Maxine and Janine smiling as she stepped through the door, Joel waving down at her from the tower, she swallowed the lump in her throat. No tears today. Today was for laughter, and coffee, and forgetting how quickly everything you loved could be gone. Today was for pretending everything was fine.  
  
Today, she was not an Abel resident transplanted to New Canton to sit restless and idle, waiting to be given a way to be useful. Today, she was Abel’s Runner Five, sharing a meal with her family. Today, she was home.


End file.
